Midway

                […] grief
wolfed my heart and all that had stitched me into this life
came undone that day.

 – Susan Musgrave, ‘The Broken Hieroglyphs of the Stars’

I am returning to a book I started
when you were still alive.
Midway through, a numb fog
hangs over what’s left.
The first half seems innocent now,
absorbed through another’s eyes.
It will need to be re-read.

I don’t know where you are.
Your body is in the ground
in the next village.
Impossible. I want to visit
and I don’t want to visit
this new, unalterable reality.

Each morning, I wake up
and your total disappearance pours in afresh,
immovable.

Didn’t I think you were like God? Without beginning
or end.

We’ve left you behind somewhere, and need to
go backwards, or pay a ransom. I’ll do anything.
Bartering with nothing, sometimes
I fool myself that you’re just on holiday:
you’ll walk through the front door soon, saying
‘all’s well’.

Little Dorothy misses you.
She sits at the foot of your chair, looking up
as your absence stretches on
unusually. She bears our sundered pack;
awaits your return.

I bristle at anyone older than you,
and those who are fathered for longer.
It is hard, now, to be around fatherhood.
Baby Anna said ‘Daddy’ and I thought,
with an amnesic stab,
that you were in the room.